MBC Mulls Netflix-Style Video Streaming for Arab World

Middle East Broadcasting Co., the biggest broadcaster in the Arab world, is mulling the launch of a subscription-based video-on-demand service, potentially pitting it against recent new entrants into an increasingly competitive market.

MBC

Video-on-demand services have been eying the opportunity to gain a significant foothold in the Arab world where Netflix Inc., which has successfully built a large subscriber base in the U.S. and Europe, has not yet launched.

Online video in the Middle East and North Africa is currently dominated by YouTube. The region is the second biggest market for YouTube in terms of viewership, according to Google, as 14.5 million hours of videos are watched per day in the region.

MBC already offers a free video-on-demand service, predominantly offering Arabic content, called Shahid.net. But it is considering launching a premium version of the service that could offer Arabic and Western movies and series before they hit television screens, according to Abe Naga, MBC’s head of digital.

“Digital is one of the key directions we want to focus on,” said Mr. Naga in an interview.

OSN, one of the largest pay-TV broadcasters in the Middle East, last month launched ‘Go’, an online streaming service for $10 a month. Smaller startups such as ICFlix and Telly have also launched in the region. But with 15 million unique monthly visitors across its current digital platforms, MBC has the biggest potential to crack the premium video-on-demand market.

Shahid.net has a catalogue of more than 1,000 seasons of programs and series for free and its biggest market is Saudi Arabia, where 28% of viewers come from, while markets outside the Arab world also make up about a quarter of visitors to the site. Its catch-up videos of broadcasted shows such as Arab Idol and Arabs Got Talent can get upwards of 1 million views.